We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections. (Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Commencement Address At Harvard, June 8, 1978)

Notes:

a) The gigantomachia has three powers or shapes or ontologies; but it has only two logics. The giants and the gods present mirror images of the logic of the other: each side believes, as Plato says, that “real existence belongs only to [it] … and what those others allege to be true reality they call not real being”. In similar fashion, Solzhenitsyn here contrasts “our spiritual life” to both “east” and “west” which are “terifying” in “the similarity of the disease afflicting” them.

b) The “split in the world is less terrifying” partly because this split, as “the space of the door“, can also be healing. The split needs to be followed back to origin where it is grounded in the gigantomachia. Once ‘there’, an essentially different power/shape/ontology can be cultivated. “The circle–is it closed? And is there really no way out? And is there only one thing left for us to do, to wait without taking action? Maybe something will happen by itself? It will never happen as long as we daily acknowledge, extol, and strengthen–and do not sever ourselves from–the most perceptible of its aspects: Lies. (…) And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. (…) This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our inaction. It is the easiest thing to do for us, but the most devastating for the lies. Because when a person renounces lies this cuts short their existence. Like an infection, they can exist only in a living organism.” (Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, “Live not by lies“, February 18, 1974)

The World Split Apart segments continue here.